“You bet I won’t,” Dugan grunted. “I guess if he’s the sort of boy you describe him to be, he won’t give them up without a struggle.”
“You could break him in two with one hand tied behind your back,” struck in Jack, gazing at the immense frame and loosely hung, ape-like arms of Dugan.
“Leave that to me, kid,” Dugan assured him, with an ominous grin, “and—hullo, here comes Hashashi now. That’s lucky. I may need him if there are three of them.”
Turning in the direction in which the soldier had spied the newcomer, the lads saw a small, slightly-built figure approaching them. It was the Japanese with whom Dugan had been seen conversing in the hut when the unsuspected listeners had overheard.
“Guess we’ll be going,” said Jack Curtiss uneasily.
“Hold on!” exclaimed Dugan, clutching him with a grip of iron, as he spoke. “You’ve got to promise me that you don’t tell nothing of this.”
“Of course,” Jack assured him; “we’ve promised you once.”
“And I guess you’ll keep your word,” said the man, grimly compressing his lips till they formed a narrow line. “If I ever suspect you of telling a thing about it, I’ve got you two ways. In the first place, I’ll reveal your part in the plot, and, in the second, I’m a bad man to have for an enemy.”
Dugan drew his low forehead into a dozen horizontal puckers, as he spoke. With his lowering brow and ape-like face, he looked indeed, as he had said, “a bad man to have for an enemy.”
“D’ye understand?” he grated harshly, glaring at Jack grimly.
Curtiss, who was as big a coward as he was a bully and reprobate, felt his knees knock together under that ferocious gaze.
“You, too!” hissed Dugan, switching suddenly on Freeman Hunt, who was looking nervous and ill at ease. He began to think that perhaps they had let themselves in for something more serious than they had bargained for.
“I won’t breathe a word of it,” Hunt hastened to assure him.
“You’d better not,” snarled Dugan, more savagely than ever, “now, git!”
Without further loss of time, Jack Curtiss and Freeman Hunt “got.” To their surprise, as they turned to hasten off, no sign of the Jap was to be seen, yet an instant before he had been in the road, not more than ten yards from them. There were no hedges at this point, and salt meadows stretched out to the sea on one side, and stubble-fields, flat and level, on the other.